“Ever since I was a young boy, my passions have been divided between science and art.” So begins A Sense of the Mysterious, a collection of essays by MIT physics-turned-humanities-professor Alan Lightman. In lyrical and elegant prose, Lightman walks the reader through his internal struggle to reconcile his two passions. Juxtaposing science and art, he examines the similarities and differences, the advantages and shortcomings of these disciplines.
For example, Lightman uses a striking metaphor to reveal how science and art are the result of the same creative thought process. Having experienced creative epiphanies in both disciplines, he writes that moments of intense scientific and artistic discovery are marked by, “an experience completely without ego, without any thought about consequences or approval or fame…[like] sailing a round-bottomed boat in strong wind … [when] a great hand has suddenly grabbed hold and flung you across the surface like a skimming stone.”
Conversely, Lightman argues that there lies a fundamental difference in the study of art and science. While a scientist is obsessed with posing questions with quantifiable answers, an artist seeks the answer to questions to which there may be no single answer. “Science is powerful, but it has limitations. Just as the world needs both certainty and uncertainty, the world needs questions with answers and questions without answers.” It is this uncertainty that so engages Lightman, becoming a pervading theme in his life and work.
Lightman resists simplifying life in his essays. Instead, he embraces its complexity. This is evident in his brief yet insightful accounts of the lives and work of four very brilliant, very different, and very public scientists of the twentieth century.
The first is Albert Einstein, who in one breath is described by Lightman as “brilliant, supremely self-confident, brutally honest, witty, stubborn-Einstein was above all else a loner.” He is shown to be a man of endless contradictions, but more importantly, he is shown to be but a man (a fact often easily lost in the Einstein mythology).
The second is Richard Feynman, genius, eccentric, rogue, safe-cracker (you’ll have to read to book to find that one out) and closet sentimentalist.
The third is Edward Teller, a walking controversy and a character that Lightman cannot sketch without describing two completely different men. “There are two Edward Tellers. There is a warm, vulnerable, honestly conflicted, idealistic Teller, and there is a maniacal, dangerous, and devious Teller.”
The fourth is Vera Rubin, pioneer, intellectual revolutionary, passionate, dreamer, and well-rounded human being.
Lightman’s accounts of the lives of these four individuals are interesting and surprising, contradicting preconceived notions and providing insights about these scientific giants.
Alan Lightman’s essays take the reader on a journey. We are made to see the world from the point of view of a scientist and a humanist all at once. The collection is poetic, bursting with metaphors and philosophy but at the same time gripping with logical, informative, and well-written arguments. Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, as Whitman would say. It seems as if the world is a living contradiction. Certainly, that of Alan Lightman is.
